A Question For SOPA Supporters: How Will You Gauge SOPA's Success?

from the quid-pro-quo dept

With all the discussion of what SOPA will or won't do in terms of breaking the internet or violating the first and fourth amendments, what I have yet to see discussed in depth is how supporters will measure the success of SOPA, if passed.

So, I'd like to take this chance to ask supporters of SOPA directly: how will you gauge the success of SOPA? What I'm interested in hearing is if any sort of metric has been defined.

I'll lay out my case briefly:

Like a lot of people, I'm of the belief that infringement can't be stopped. Even with this legislation in place, it's not difficult to imagine the same sort of whack-a-mole game that has plagued the content industries in the past will continue, only on a worldwide scale with the government's blessing. While this may increase the number of sites shut down or cut off from funding, I feel that it's overall impact will be minimal. I could be completely wrong about this, but I feel that those who still want to get something for free will still find a way, and find it much easier than those seeking to shut it down would imagine. The internet moves faster than 100+ year old industries and the government.

As collateral damage from this legislation mounts (and even the content industry's lawyer admits there will be some), there will be backlash from those affected. This has the possibility of encouraging more users to "stick it to the man," such as it were, increasing the amount of infringing activity.

If the intention of this legislation is to provide enforcement for copyright, my belief is that there should be some sort of metric or guideline to gauge its success. Without some sort of measurement in place, the very real possibility is that the enforcement efforts will continue to expand in scope and cause more and more collateral damage.

So, in all honesty, I'd like to open this thread to supporters of SOPA. I'd like to know how you'd measure the success of this legislation. Will it be based on the number of sites shuttered? Is it an increase in sales? If so, is there a certain percentage or dollar amount that would demonstrate the effectiveness of this bill? Is it something more vague or has someone out there run any sort of numbers on what a desirable outcome would be?

I'm not looking to get hung up on semantics ("piracy" vs. "infringement," "theft" vs. "sharing," etc.) or looking to rehash any arguments about infinite goods, piracy leading to sales, industry studies or anything that distracts from this question. I'm also not interested in hearing "we just want our rights and intellectual property respected/protected." This legislation goes far beyond anything that simplistic, especially something as unquantifiable as "respect." I'd like the discussion to stay focused on what SOPA proponents feel this legislation will accomplish.

Easy

Piracy is made up of many levels. There are hardcore pirates, who would steal anything they can get and distribute it widely for whatever reasons they have, social, economic, or what have you. These are people who cannot and will not ever be changed.

At the other end of the scale, you have people who do not pirate, will not pirate, and much prefer to obtain content legally.

In the middle, well, you have the "soft middle", with people leaning more towards piracy, more towards legal, whatever. You have opportunists, you have tag alongs, and other people who do things because they can. Think of it as the mob mentality, on a grander scale. Many people pirate because they can, because it is easy, and because there is no cost or risk involved.

Right now, the soft middle leans towards piracy because they can, because it's easy, it works, it's easy to find stuff, it's easy to download it, it's all automated and simple - and the risks are negligible.

With SOPA, there is great potential that many of the pirate sites out there today which facilitate the access, host the files, or otherwise contribute to piracy won't be accessible from the US - at least not easily. As it becomes harder to find stuff, harder to obtain it, and more effort and risk comes into trying to get it, the soft middle will start to lean back to legal sources. This will be doubly so if these laws encourage legal alternatives to become more prevalent. Already, things like netflix and other streaming services have to some extent started that process.

Piracy won't go away by any means. But it will not longer be (for Americans anyway) the cheap, simple alternative. Further, if the law makes it harder for pirate sites (and those "torrent search" sites) to make money, they are likely to be less and less common. Remove the economic motivations from the deal, and many of the players who are only there for the money and not for the lulz will fold up their tents and move along.

My feeling is that piracy goes from it's probably 40% of the marketplace down to something like 20%, and that a good chunk of those people who get out of piracy end up using one or more "legal" services to fill the void, and fix many of the issues.

Further, I think that all of this is very good for independent artists, who will no longer have to compete with the high end product being "free!", and they may be able to better attract audiences on the basis of their own content, not on someone else's.

No major decreases in revenue

It's clear that innovation is not something the entertainment industry is able to cope with. This bill isn't about getting more money. It's about stopping the next disruptive technology from getting off the ground. It's probably too late to shut down You-Tube now. it's too popular to go away quietly without people making a fuss. But if they can stop the next game-changer, no matter the nation it starts in, they can prolong their current revenue streams until the current execs get their golden parachute.

They learned a lesson from Napster. Going to court won the battle, but they still lost the war. Napster changed the way people wanted to purchase music (i.e. right now, over the Internet, rather than from Tower Records) , even though they successfully shut it down. This bill is about shutting things down faster, before people's perspectives can change.

SOPA is part of the 1%. More proof that Democracy is dead in the United States and around the world. The New World Order happened and people didn't even know. Our Governments have failed us, they have become corporate owned and We The People need to fight back.

Re:

What if they are only getting the movies, albums and books because they are free and readily available... what happens if the "soft middle" American downloaders all stop downloading but don't legally consume any more than they already did? Will that be a success? Will that be measured as a "Win".

My take on this is that if you stop piracy, which being involved in filesharing since the dawn of BBS I think you don't stand a chance of doing, and don't offer similar systems where people can obtain content at a price that is right and at a time when they want it then you could actually see less sales.

Re:

Right now, the soft middle leans towards piracy because they can, because it's easy, it works, it's easy to find stuff, it's easy to download it, it's all automated and simple - and the risks are negligible.

Re: Re:

Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

I use Rapidshare to distribute legal stuff (like my own work). Safe Harbor isn't merely a cop-out, an ass-saver. It's to make sure that the pirate sites ARE pirate sites and not legitimate sites that pirates just happen to use.

Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

Re:

...and then people will go back to sneakernets and copy parties. The way things were done BEFORE the internet, but it will be untraceable. You may get a drop in piracy. You may also get a spike, because people will KNOW you can't catch them.
You'll also get a lot more sharing of physical media, and make better hackers and hacking programs, since people will have to hack their own software.
Do people really think that hacking and copying was ever unique to the internet? Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
At least we should get some better coders out of the deal.

Re: Re:

and how will that solve the problem of downloaders not having money? Will the MAFIAA pay them to buy the overpriced garbage they market everyday?

What this person is talking about is casual downloaders, but causal downloaders are Youtube downloaders. So unless you shutdown YouTube, they won't stop them in anyway. And if you shut down the internet tommawor, casual downloaders will just go back to radio, tapes and bootlegs. So, even if the MAFIAA get their wish, they still won't stop casual piracy at all. The idiots who post here, who for some weird reason have a fetish for Hollywood and the MAFIAA propaganda have aparently never lived on earth these past 45 of my years where piracy was always widespread.

Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

Everyone keeps talking about Youtube as if getting rid of it would be bad. -- I don't agree. -- But anyway, IS Youtube a valid "new business model"? Figures are difficult to find, as one of the top links says:

Re:

I give money directly to the artists I like, by going to their shows and buying their merch. That's the ONLY way to give money directly to the artists.

For the guy a few posts above, until we get a way we can *EASILY* purchase/play movies/games/music without jumping through the hoops of DRM, then and ONLY then, will pirating fully stop. Currently, it takes more effort to buy something than it takes to download, there's where the problem REALLY lies.

Re: Re: Re:

Re: Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney breaks down some of Google’s opportunities for new billion-dollar businesses in a new research report he released this morning. In particular, he focuses on two of Google’s most promising growth opportunities: YouTube and local advertising. According to his estimates, YouTube’s gross revenues hit $825 million in 2010, and will reach $1.3 billion in 2011 and $1.7 billion in 2012. After stripping out revenue share, the net revenue contribution Google will get to keep from YouTube is estimated to go from $544 million last year to $1.1 billion in 2012 (see table above). Mahaney also tracks ads on Youtube’s Topp 100 videos. Currently, 81 percent of YouTube’s Top 100 videos show ads, compared to about 60 percent a year ago.

Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

The question asked was how do you measure it to see if it is working or not?

When people want to see what happens to environments they deploy temperature measuring devices, atmospheric pressure sensors, chemical detectors and so forth to collect data and see what it is happening, so how will you measure it?

Re:

I don't think that it is legal alternatives vs non legal, I think it is tech savvy vs non tech savvy people. Ya if you are not vary tech savvy, the cost of infringement scares you because you do not know how to get around it and avoid it. Those people tend to take the easier, safer, convenient route, which is to pay for everything. But the next generation has never known what it is like to not have a computer. They are sharers, just look on Facebook and Youtube how much crap they share. Do you really think they will stop because of this? They will be resourceful and just take it deeper so you don't know it is happening.

I don't know a good metric, but it better not be left up to the MPAA or RIAA, because we all know how they judge economic impact and cook the books on things.

I wish every law was measured by its success

If we gauged the success of every law, I bet we would find many that need to be repealed because they are either ineffective or too effective. By too effective I mean if you are making a criminal out of a large percentage of the population then you need to consider that just maybe that activity shouldn't be illegal.

Re: No major decreases in revenue

Napster caught them by surprise, they didn't see it coming, so I have to wonder how the blind being given a bludging tools will be able to stop the next big thing, they can stop a lot of things, but if something like a Napster events occur again they are just screwed.

Frak, I think I will write a comic about Napster events that sounds cool LoL

Re: Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

I apologize if you're parodying a troll rather than being one.

"Everyone keeps talking about Youtube as if getting rid of it would be bad."
It would be bad. Youtube has become a way of sharing and spreading culture, information, humor etc. In a very general way it's like saying "getting rid of Television or Radio or the Internet would be bad."

"I don't agree."

Why not?

"IS Youtube a valid "new business model"?"

Yes, no? Why are you asking this question?

"So even your vaunted Youtube is on questionable basis!"

It's not mine; I don't own it and "Youtube is on questionable basis!" does not compute. I don't understand what you're saying.

"Youtube appears thus far to be operating on its seed capital. Great example, guys."

Re:

Nice post, some I agree, some I disagree...

"My feeling is that piracy goes from it's probably 40% of the marketplace down to something like 20%, and that a good chunk of those people who get out of piracy end up using one or more "legal" services to fill the void, and fix many of the issues."

I agree with you here. There will be a significant reduction in traceable piracy. But I disagree with your "end up using more "legal" services to fill the void" I'm thinking, they find other free services to fill the void until the next Napster or Torrent like alternative comes out. You can bet your ass there are plenty of people working on this very thing even now. Besides, what "legal" services are out there for them to use? Most of the good ones have been destroyed piece by piece.

"Right now, the soft middle leans towards piracy because they can, because it's easy, it works, it's easy to find stuff, it's easy to download it, it's all automated and simple - and the risks are negligible. "

Agreed 100%. But your only going to slow them down until the next "easy to use software that routes around the current laws and blocks" comes out. This law is not fulfilling their need to consume, and neither is your current distribution system. People will buy your products, hell most people WANT to buy even though they can pirate, but your going to have to create some good alternatives that allow them to consume your product how they want to consume it, and at a market price.. not at a monopoly price.

I also see you don't voice any concerns regarding collateral damage. This bill is taking a "nuke the ant hill" approach to pest control. Your going to be taking out quite a few friendlies with this one, I think the pirate culture is going to build on that one and although you will see a short term gain, your going to get hammered in the end.

Re:

"My feeling is that piracy goes from it's probably 40% of the marketplace down to something like 20%..."

How will these numbers be measured? For that matter, how are they defined? If Alice sells 1000 copies of her album for $1 each, and Bob remixes one of the ten songs and 1000 people listen to it, twice each, what's the percentage?

This is the only quantitative prediction in your post. I salute you for actually making such a prediction, but I notice that it doesn't refer to the size of the market or the total amount of commerce, but the proportion of piracy. As a voter and internet user, I don't see why I should care about that, or consider it a "success". I'm not a professional "content creator", but I don't see why they should care either, since it says nothing about how much easier or harder it will make it for them to make money.

Re: I wish every law was measured by its success

This has the possibility of encouraging more users to "stick it to the man," such as it were, increasing the amount of infringing activity.

I pirate nothing. Not software, not music, not movies, not ebooks, nothing. But I have said for a long time now, as soon as the content industry starts costing me money or harming me in any other way, I would become the worlds greatest pirate. It seems I may need to hoist the ole Jolly Roger soon if this law gets passed. I can assure the content industry, I will pirate anything and everything if they use this law to take away legal activities from me.

The beauty of bills which legislate morality is that they are to be judged not by efficiency or effectiveness, but rather by the moral character they instill. Even if the industry loses sales due to SOPA, the fact that they get to punish those dirty dirty pirates has become an obsession. Pirates are the evil boogeymen that the industry can explain away all of its problems with, not the fact that they consistently fail to provide services to their users.

So the success of SOPA is not in what it does or if it is effective, but rather if it even gets passed.

Tim, It's Simple

10 - Dry cleaners and popcorn producers worldwide will enjoy a resurgence in business

9 - There will never be another Justin Beiber

8 - No one will ever leave the living room to go to the bathroom during the commercials again.

7 - Viacom won't have to kill Spongebob in order to pay their CEO's salary

6 - Computers everywhere will stop allowing people to make copies and will automatically turn into television sets

5 - People will once again flock to theaters to see movies, then rent the movie from websites, then buy it on DVD, then buy it on Blu-Ray, then buy it on...

4 - Musicians and film makers will stop making a living using just the internet. All movies and music will once gain come only from Hollywood and the recording industry, as it should be.

3 - Congress will eventually give the internet to Hollywood, once it's apparent that they know how best to manage it.

2 - The "entertainment industry" will see a windfall of $100 billion next fiscal year as people go back to buying copies (see #5 above)

And, finally, the number one way SOPA defenders will gauge the success of the bill will be the disappearance of rogue sites like Techdirt, Ars Technica, the EFF, Slashdot, etc where "common" people have the audacity to publicly insist that their government work for them.

Re:

SOPA is truly showing the Intelligent and open minded that our Government truly is corrupt and bought and owned by Big Money Influence.I will vote for any Reps or President that will not take the money and will not Censor our lives.I will now look into what Ron Paul is about.I will vote for any who does not fit in with the Big Money Political Marriage.I will also try and do a lawsuit against this SOPA as I am a musician who gives away my ART FOR FREE ! I give it away on my website and facebook/myspace,etc and I use my home computer with P2P filesharing to save my money as it costs bandwidth on the main website.SOPA will go and take down TPB & any other site that gives out free stuff via P2P.They will love to do that and to force you to their bands and stores.If they try and stop my ART from being heard it is a violation of my 1st Amendment Rights and it violates the tens of thousands of other bands who do the same thing I do.
Lastly, A BIG TWO FINGERS IN THE AIR to this current Government filled with yes men and greedy fuckers who take money any way they can.They will even use their knowledge of upcoming laws to buy stocks as in insider like trading and do it legally.
FUCK YOU ! Keep on squeezing the people and you will not like the outcome you get !

Killing Piracy - Or Killing Free?

We all know that the content industry, and most industries in general, view economics as a zero-sum game. Therefore, one way to increase their share of the market is to remove any other players. If someone spends 30 minutes looking at cute cats, that's 30 minutes they could have spent paying to watch a movie.
So, what better way is there to get more eyeballs, than to cut off any other avenues of entertainment? Public domain, CC, user-generated, whatever. If it's not THEIR production, bury it.
Really, how else can you explain Archive.org on their blacklist?

SOPA

SInce the lobbyists have to walk at least a mile in Europe (compared to congress walking to the lobbyists in the US) this might be a good thing for us Europeans. I bet most MPAA execs can't tell Belgium from Belarus or Sweden from Switzerland so maybe they'll ignore us after this...

Heavy irony aside those who believe in the "land of the free" should start reading into what Corporativism means and what it's related to (i.e Facism). A country so focused on finding ways to protect the government and the corporations from the people will soon be shaking hands with North Korea and calling communism their new best friend. I don't care who wins the next president election (republican or democrat) but please try to find someone who cares about the voters or soon you wont have to worry about voting anymore.

Re:

Ok. I really liked your whole comment. It was a nice concise discussion of what would be great to happen.

However, I Must take issue with something that you said:

Right now, the soft middle leans towards piracy because they can, because it's easy, it works, it's easy to find stuff, it's easy to download it, it's all automated and simple - and the risks are negligible.

With SOPA, there is great potential that many of the pirate sites out there today which facilitate the access, host the files, or otherwise contribute to piracy won't be accessible from the US - at least not easily. As it becomes harder to find stuff, harder to obtain it, and more effort and risk comes into trying to get it, the soft middle will start to lean back to legal sources. This will be doubly so if these laws encourage legal alternatives to become more prevalent. Already, things like netflix and other streaming services have to some extent started that process.

If Services like Netflix, and I would add Hulu, Spotify, Pandora etc to that, have already started the process of turning the soft middle from piracy, why do we need SOPA? Why not just create more services that are "easy, work, easy to find stuff, easy to download it, all automated and simple"? Wouldn't that be the better solution to legislating the Soft Middle out of piracy?

When you pass laws making something illegal, you run the risk of those people hating being forced to change their behavior. Yet, when you give them something better than the illegal means, they are more willing to like and trust you in the future. Wouldn't that be the ideal solution?

Re:

I don't necessarily agree. My dad who is in his 70's got a Kindle about a year ago. He immediately complained to me that a lot of the ebooks are priced as much or higher than physical books. Now he is an engineer and not a business major and he knows that digital content should not be priced anywhere near physical content. Especially after I schooled him on the fact that he doesn't really own that content.

Re: Re: Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

Ironically the tech community bought these over reaching measures on themselves by rejecting ANY copyright based potential business models for the future. That left the old school copyright based industries no choice but to fight for its survival. You guys should have compromised and used your "intellect" to incorporate the new with the old - instead you said "screw copyrights" - BIG mistake.

Re: No major decreases in revenue

... But if they can stop the next game-changer, no matter the nation it starts in, they can prolong their current revenue streams ...

SOPA will more than likely have the exact opposite effect. It will speed the development of a distributed system that cannot be blocked or tracked. I could get something up and running in a week or two as a uTorrent app or a Google chrome app or extension.

Plagerism

Hey Masnick, this was Zoe Lofgren's theme song today. Who's plagiarizing who?
If guessing that Gigi Sihn has her hand up the back of both of your shirts making your mouth move. Anyway, you'd better get focused. Google, Net Coalition, Ebay, Yahoo, Linkedin, etc all sold you out today publicly advocating for a version of the bill that only uses eliminating ad networks and payment processors from the ecosystem as means of enforcement. So beat your head against the wall all you like. They only players on your side that mattered just came out in favor of an anti-piracy bill and endorsed 2/3's of the remedies.

Re: Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

Let's assume YouTube is not yet profitable. Why would that make getting rid of it good? It's like you don't even understand fundamentally why it's brought up as an example of a site that could be shut down by SOPA but absolutely should not be. It's got nothing to do with profitability of their business model and everything to do with the free exchange of culture.

Its about Marsh vs Alabama

The heart of the problem is that SOPA enables law enforcement to prosecute people who violate a company's terms of service, even if that terms of service is legally unconscionable. Unless a TOS complies with Marsh vs Alabama, and we toss out those stupid Sony and AOL decisions, SOPA will amount to internet totalitarianism.

Re: Plagerism

Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

"PIRACY CAN'T BE LEFT TO INCREASE!"

Why not? Be specific.

"That will most certainly bring down the very content industry that so many here claim to support."

Assuming facts very much not in evidence. There's a possibility that it will bring down the legacy content recording industry but even that remains to be demonstrated and the legacy content recording industry is in no way synonymous with the content industry as a whole.

Re:

What are you smoking? There are entire tech company graveyards of companies that have tried to work with entertainment companies to build copyright based business models. In most cases, the entertainment industry has gone back a second time to the negotiating table after the business achieves some level of success and either:

a) jack up licensing rates to where neither the distributors go out of business and nobody makes money, or

b) demands that the usefulness of the technology be curtailed (features removed [e.g. hulu], or more release windows)

Almost every instance makes it look like the entertainment industry has less interest in making money, and more interest in controlling everything.

Re: Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

If youtube gets shut down what replaces it, another gatekeeper? Because youtube has no gatekeepers many people have had the chance to create, share, and earn money without someone standing in their way. Here's a few people that I probably wouldn't have ever had to chance to hear of without youtube.

I'm convinced that these people and many more that have succeeded in finding an audience without a studio's "help" is why Viacom and the other studios feel threatened by it. So count me as one of those people that think getting rid of youtube would be a horrible idea.

Re: Re: I wish every law was measured by its success

I totally agree. I have never pirated, and do NOT believe in it - *if* there are legal alternatives. Now - let's look at what the whiny industry has announced. At the end of this year, they are pulling all the Harry Potter movies from retail availability. What exactly do they think this accomplishes? Wanna bet that 60 days later they are on a rampage about all the "pirated" copies downloaded? I own close to 500 DVD/blu-ray movies - wait for it - because I AM A FAN!!!!. And the day that HP is pulled from legal sources, I will throw my copies away, and go download them all from a torrent site. Hoist 'er High!!! The Jolly Roger Must FLY!
I believe that copyright needs to have 2 rights - you have the right to be the sole producer/seller (for a time) and I have the right to be able to purchase at any time. You take away my right to purchase, I take away your right to be the sole source. Copyright expires the second you no longer offer legal, available-for-purchase copies.

Re: Killing Piracy - Or Killing Free?

Re:

"The beauty of bills which legislate morality is that they are to be judged not by efficiency or effectiveness, but rather by the moral character they instill. Even if the industry loses sales due to SOPA, the fact that they get to punish those dirty dirty pirates has become an obsession."

Which is funny because it'll backfire.

As we've seen with any other group in history - if you oppress them and turn them into criminals, there's only so much they'll take before they embrace the dirty words you use to describe them and decide that since you've stacked the deck against them, there's no reason to follow your rules anymore.

SOPA will turn many in "the soft middle" into pirates, because they're already being called pirates for the casual things they already do.

Some shows aren't available online through official channels the same day and time that they are available on TV. Many viewers don't give a good god damn where your revenue comes from. The technology exists to post the video online and watch it when you want, so why don't the studios give their customers what they want? So instead, people watch streaming video sites to catch their shows instead of being forced to watch the programs they way they did in the 1950's - on the terms of the studios. These people are "dirty pirates." They're committing copyright infringement, even though what they're doing is logistically and morally the same as using a DVR to record the show and watch it later.

Re:

"Right now, the soft middle leans towards piracy because they can, because it's easy, it works, it's easy to find stuff, it's easy to download it, it's all automated and simple - and the risks are negligible. "

Correct, now the problem is stricter laws isn't the way to fight this. Offering a easy to use legal alternative is. They want people to go back to just watching broadcast TV, its not going to happen they tasted the future. Provide more legal alternatives that are fast, convenient, easy to use, don't require the installation of rootkits, does't have crippling DRM and isnt subject to windowing and piracy will decline sharply.

People want to watch something, they type it into google and 1MM hits come where they can watch it online. It is not their fault that none of those options are legal. People love netflix and they loved Hulu before the industry started crippling it. Instead of spending billions trying to hold back the flood the money should be investing in embracing new technology and finding new ways to generate revenue while providing customers what they want and what they know is possible.

Re: Re: Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

Oh well 'Pirate' is in the name? Well that's all the proof we need, shut those fuckers down! What's that you say? They're not in our jurisdiction and it's the users that are actually doing something wrong? Well going after individual users in an age where literally anyone with a computer can mass copy content on the same scale that someone with a massively expensive printing press could have in the 1700s is hard and expensive for copyright holders (the poor dears). How should we respond to this abject ubiquity of devices literally designed to create and curate copies of digital information? Should we change an archaic law that was based on the economics of several centuries ago that worked chiefly because there were huge extra-legal barriers to entry in the infringement market? Fuck no, let's find an easy target like a website to go after and just fuck their shit up to take out our frustration.

Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

"separate links and hosting keeps them all from being shut down"

So why not target the people hosting the content rather than trying to take down the linker? I mean if you take down a link aggregate site but leave all the illegally hosted material alone how long does it take for someone else to link to it?

Its like if a community had a problem with people growing weed everywhere. So they shut down all the home&garden stores rather than just go shut down the growers.

Re: Re:

anyone who thinks that when 'stuff' isn't freely avaiable people will go out and buy whatever, is living in a dream world. atm 'stuff' is downloaded, tried, watched or listened to. the decision is then made as to whether that 'stuff' is worth buying or not. if it is, it's bought, if it isn't, it isn't. what the introducers and supporters of SOPA and it's like always forget is that if something is bought and not liked, it can't be taken back for a refund. if something can be tried first, there is at least a chance of it being bought. without that option to try or return for a refund, people will be very selective on what they spend their money. a hell of a lot of 'stuff' wont even be given a second glance!

Re:

I appreciate your comments here frankly I did not expect a single coherent answer.

I think I understand what you are saying here. Basically, it is just easier to get illegal stuff now than legal stuff. And SOPA will change that equation.

I decided to try a little experiment to see if it was actually easier to get a legal copy of the movie Cars 2 than a legal one that I would be able to watch today or tomorrow.

I have a number of TVs and video devices at home, my kids (I have 6 and 2 grandchildren at home) computers do not have DVD drives only CD.
The video system setup in my car works off of a hard drive and also does not have a DVD drive.

I would like to have something that any person in my family can enjoy wherever in the house or car they are, So I am really interested in a digital copy.

I went to google and entered cars 2, all of the links on the front page were to legitimate content, but none of them led me to a site or location where I could pay for and download the movie.

I choose Disney's site.

I can buy the DVD or Blu-Ray, and the main page says Movie Download but after looking for the Download for 20 minutes, I gave up.

If I buy the 5 disc premium copy I can get a digital copy, but there again I have to order it and wait for shipping or drive across town to pick it up, even then I end up with a single digital copy and have to choose which disc less device I want to use it on. And in my experience all of these digital copies have to be used on a computer so I can't put it on the Hard Drive in the car.

I can't view it on Netflix or Amazon Prime, nor is it available to pay-per-view on my dish.

I went to thepiratebay and in about 10 seconds found a number of downloads that I could have in less than one hour with no restrictions on my use.

Then I did a number of searches through a variety of search engines, (assuming that SOPA was already in place and the folks at tpb had folded, although I don't see that as a realistic scenario ) and found quick easy downloads all over the place.

So, given this brief and limited experiment, My conclusion has to be that SOPA would have to make an absolutely huge difference primarily by inconveniencing the people on the fence, and shutdown literary hundreds of sites along with all the in-intended collateral damage, or Disney could just let me pay for a download from the original site, or let Netflix or Amazon do the same, and save themselves a lot of bandwidth cost.

Seems to me that the issue is not the ease of getting illegal content it is the difficulty in getting useful legal content.

I would like to see a test Disney, could easily pick one of their movies and do a pay to download test, just to see if it did lead to less piracy vs. more.

I have to tell you I am not all that surprised, I tried to watch a pay-per-view movie on my satellite dish last year and kept getting an error, I was told by the support staff of the company that my tv was not compatible with the copy protection scheme on the movie, and that I might be able to watch it by going and buying a super cheap HDMI cable from Walmart as that would circumvent the issue.

Main line content producers have a major problem with the way they treat potential customers like me and SOPA is just going to make it worse. Since it will embolden them to continue down this same path of excessive control.

I also have an issue with the "probably 40% of the marketplace quote". Is that just your gut feeling or do you have any statistics to back that number up.

Re: Re: Easy

I believe that many people would be able to justify a huge lawsuit for loss of revenues and other things against the DOJ, Congress, and the Entertainment Industry. I would love to see that go to trial.

Hell, it could even be an international trial for that since so many other countries would be effected.

Re:

Those 20% would simply stop consuming as they can't afford it in the first place. You seems to forget about the million customers Netflix lost only after few dollars price increase. They don't have an infinite amount of money as you imply and refuse to spend it on CD's... No law can change this.

They would buy even less because they would not wait in line for the next album (or attend the concert, or wish for it as a gift) after they didn't listen for the previous one.

Re: Re:

"If Services like Netflix, and I would add Hulu, Spotify, Pandora etc to that, have already started the process of turning the soft middle from piracy, why do we need SOPA? Why not just create more services that are "easy, work, easy to find stuff, easy to download it, all automated and simple"? Wouldn't that be the better solution to legislating the Soft Middle out of piracy?"

My feeling is that the answer here lies in the cost of actually doing it legally, meeting regulations, accepting liability, and all of other pesky things that happen when you actually want to run it like a business. These services are still somewhat held up on the costs of content, because while they are generally past the critical mass point of getting enough people to visit so they can exist, few of them are showing truly profitable models.

The more users they have, the wider their reach, the less it costs on a per user basis to do things.

We also need a marketplace that can support many pandoras, many netflix, many hulus... and more beyond that.

Here's a great example: If the people who currently pirate TV episodes instead viewed them from the original sources (network websites), they would increase the traffic to these sites, and make them more obviously useful, perhaps more profitable, and certainly encourage them to do more with it.

It's a little complicated, and you have to look at a lot of numbers to understand the situation. Only a certain percentage of people stream videos at all outside of youtube, at least from official and legal sources. Now, if you can move some of the people who are currently using illegal services, and get them into legal alternatives, then things will likely work out better in the long run for everyone.

As long as their is a source that doesn't have to deal with the real costs of operation, and doesn't have to support the artists or creators, and doesn't have to pay taxes or be a good citizen, then it will be hard to get people to convert - everyone likes a free lunch!

Re: Re: Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

Metrics have Baselines

The problem I see with establishing a metric, is what baseline is to be used?

If we start with the 'industry' numbers, it might take a 100 years of growth to actually meet the current levels, let alone exceed them. And I believe that they will bitch every year because their 'growth' is actually 'catching up' with past 'losses', and will continue to add new annual losses and then bitch the increases are not big enough to correct their 'due'.

Since Congress is ignoring their own numbers, I believe that if any metric is established, it will be skewed in the way the movie industry reports profit on billion dollar grossing movies as $0.00.

Re: Re: Re:

I agree, I think I would rather learn to play an instrument and create my own content around a camp fire than pay for all this crap that keeps coming out of Hollywood. Part of the reason people are resisting so much is because the deluge of crap that has come from the entertainment industry for decades.

Yeah there are a few good songs and movies here and there, but the vast majority is not worth the plastic its printed on and no one wants to pay album price for one or two decent songs.

If the industry wants to stop piracy it has got to fulfill the wishes of their consumers. That means FAIR pricing. That means available through the mediums the customer chooses. That means quality over quantity.

So far none of these things have been met by the industry and only some of those have been met by new offerings (though Pandora, Netflix, and Spotify come dang close to hitting all those marks).

Re:

Even assuming that your predictions are true, is that reduction in piracy rate worth the cost? I know trolls dismiss this as FUD, but we really are talking about shutting down the free (as in speech) internet here and turning it into a a corporate wild west, where big business can unilaterally shut down legitimate, noninfringing competitors and political enemies by simply sending an email. Sure, those entities can theoretically sue -- but only the well-funded can do that.

SOPA is a huge step into taking the internet away from the people (except to the extent that big business allows the people to use it) and turning it into interactive cable TV. That's the death of the internet, or at least the parts of the internet that have real social value.

I maintain that the cost is not only too high, it is criminally high, particularly when it's not the only possible solution. It is immoral to saddle the majority of people with such a burden only to support an aging, inflexible business that contributes comparatively little of value either financially or socially.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Re: Re: Plagerism

Name calling and defaming is your response?

You so just killed ANY point you were trying to make.

What name calling?

Anyway since you missed the point on the first go, it is that Google & Co just sold you out supporting a bill that uses ad networks and payment providers as the weapons against rogue sites. My further point is that you're really screwed now because those guys are only ones giving your point of view any gravitas at all.

Re: Re: Plagerism

Name calling and defaming is your response?

You so just killed ANY point you were trying to make.

What name calling?

Anyway since you missed the point on the first go, it is that Google & Co just sold you out supporting a bill that uses ad networks and payment providers as the weapons against rogue sites. My further point is that you're really screwed now because those guys are only ones giving your point of view any gravitas at all.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

Re: Re:

Wayne, I think part of the problem is that the business isn't there yet, because the marketplace I think isn't 100% settled. That is pretty much set to change in the next little while.

Disney is perhaps one of the hard cases, because they are the most cautious when it comes to putting their product out there in any format, let alone digital. I was able to find it for sale on Itunes, if that helps you out. That would probably be the first place I would look, not the last.

"I also have an issue with the "probably 40% of the marketplace quote". Is that just your gut feeling or do you have any statistics to back that number up."

This is based on many of the different studies that have come out, most of which show that anywhere from 20-40% of people "download". It's also based somewhat on looking at the drop in recorded music sales, which are off 58%. Even allowing for some "natural" drop, there is clearly a big number of people in the middle willing to download. So the number isn't scientific, it is an approximation - as is the idea of dropping it to 20%. It's not hard numbers, just a way of describing a situation that is somewhat hard to put in absolute numbers.

Re: Re:

SOPA does nothing of the sort.

It doesn't shut down the internet, it doesn't take it away from the people, it doesn't none of that.

Sorry if you feel that way.

I would think that artists should be rejoicing, especially the independent ones. Here is a clear chance to work without all the piracy around, without all the crap and without having to fight against hollywood / label music getting jammed into people's hands for free. It's time for them to up their game, get their projects out there, and enjoy a playing field that is leveled out and lets them profit from their lower costs and niche markets.

The indies suffer with piracy as the majors do, for different reasons. When people have to choose $10 for a DVD or, $1 (or even free) for a download of some new indie movie, maybe they will take the indie movie. If the hollywood movie is free, what do you use to encourage people to check out the indies?

If the only social value on the internet for you was pirated content and websites packed with infringing material, then yes, you are going to be sad. You don't have my sympathy though, how can I feel for you when it's just your free lunch that is over?

To me it looks like it's already succeeding

I don't live in the U.S.

I find this whole SOPA / PIPA law quite disturbing and depressing.

Anywhere else in the world where special interest groups get to write special laws that exist only for their own benefit and get what they want by paying off elected representatives to do their bidding, it's called corruption.

In the U.S. and the power of the lobbyists, it seems it's just 'how you do business'.

With the U.S. economy in such a mess and the tech industry providing more hope for jobs than any other sector, that your own government would so blindly seek to introduce such bizarrely thought out and ill-informed legislation and regulation that could in effect kill the golden goose just seems to prove again that something is seriously not right at the top.

I have heard it said that sometimes Americans can be surprised at the level of animosity felt towards your country by people from other elsewhere.

Your government decisions on things like SOPA /PIPA just help ramp up that feeling of ill will - which is a real shame because as most of the posters on this site alone show, that it's not really the American people who are the problem. The will of the people just does not really seem to matter.

Re: Re:

I bought the Back to the Future Blu Ray Trilogy (after having owned the DVD and most likely the VHS), yet I get forcefed anti piracy messages and have to skip a ton of crap. I'm used to it, it's life.

Where they continue to piss me off is the little things designed to annoy, like having to select language, and English (or UK if by country) is last on 4 pages of options.

Then there's pause. If I pause on my PS3 I get a 'universal' logo pop up. Ok, no biggie, but if I leave it for 10 minutes (approx) it goes back to the main menu and I have no way of resuming where I was without manually searching through the chapters. If I pause an AVI, it stays on pause FOREVER. I did email Universal to (politely) suggest this feature sucked and I never had any form of reply. Why bother when the consumer has no alternative.

Government protection of your monopoly = no reason to be nice to your customers.

Re: Re: Re:

Again, thank you for your insights. However, I disagree again. What TPB is doing is innovating through infringement.

Imagine, if you will, the aforementioned Cars 2. Imagine that it was available from Disney's website as a DRM-free digital download for marginal cost+£1 (brit here). I'm fairly certain that I'd be happy to pay that, and I know a lot of other parents would. But they can't.

Now, Cars 2 is available on my smartphone, but it costs £3.49 to RENT FOR ONE NIGHT and £6.99 to buy (but I don't really OWN it.) The film has already turned a massive profit for Disney/Pixar through merchandise. So why is it not available at that price-point?

That wouldn't stop the hardcore infringers, but it sure as hell would be a nice start to giving people a reason to buy.

Re: No major decreases in revenue

It's probably too late to shut down You-Tube now. it's too popular to go away quietly without people making a fuss.

Viacom is already trying (and failing) under the DMCA to squeeze money from YouTube. They won't fail under SOPA.

YouTube is already of questionable profitability, and they get 48 hours of video every minute. How well do you think they'll fair when they are legally liable for the content of every second of it, especially since each example of a child dancing to a copyrighted song is worth a hojillion dollars by the estimating team at a record label?

Re: Re: Re:

So I do "pirate" TV shows. Why? Because I'm a fan of certain shows and want to be up-to-date rather than wait a year or more till a (often lousy dubbed) version is available in German(y). I've been a huge LOST fan and thought about buying the eps on iTunes. Problems: the episode

- was a day late rather than 1 hour max after airdate (as on torrent)

- with hardcoded subtitles (can't be turned off)

- is only watchable on iTunes so I have to sit in front of my puter

- costs 2,99 Euros in SD which means buying an entire season is be more expensive than buying the DVD

So, LOST started in 2004 and I've been torrenting each ep, at times contributing to swarms of 60.000 seeders + 90.000 leechers! Granted, this started before Netflix and Hulu but even after almost 10 years of infringement on this scale and the industry crying wolf about how the sky is falling, they still make enough money to pay a sucker like Charlie Sheen more than 1.5 million per show.

Re: Bad Luck, if you dont like the law...

Re: How Will You Gauge SOPA's Success? - with difficulty

I don't really want to do it in this thread (this was being such a good discussion), but I have to point a few things out to you:
Worldwide Live Music / Concert Revenues: http://www.grabstats.com/statmain.asp?StatID=70
2006 = $16.6bn
2011 = $23.5 bn

Okay, let's start on the face. Since the first part is also in the second part, let's try the second one without the live component:

2006: 44.1 bn
2011: 44.1 bn

So, there we go, flat.

Now, I would have to say that these numbers don't particularly jive with any other number I have seen (including one posted earlier today that showed sales up 3% this year, after dropping about 12-13% last year). Further, IFPI stats, using documents posted from 2000-2010 shows a drop in recorded music sales including online at 58%. It doesn't at all line up with these stats. I am not sure where emarketer is getting their stuff from, it would appear to either be incomplete or containing data that just isn't as reported elsewhere.

Re: Re: Re:

These services are still somewhat held up on the costs of content, because while they are generally past the critical mass point of getting enough people to visit so they can exist, few of them are showing truly profitable models.

With the exception of Pandora, all of their models were turning a profit. The problem is that Big Content feels entitled to more profit (even though they are making more gross and more net every year).

We also need a marketplace that can support many pandoras, many netflix, many hulus

Why? If these platforms are available to every content producer and every consumer why do we need "others"? This sounds like the thinking of a non-Internet business mind. I'm not saying competition would be bad, only that there is no imperative for their to be alternatives if the platform can serve the needs of both producers and consumers.

Here's a great example: If the people who currently pirate TV episodes instead viewed them from the original sources (network websites), they would increase the traffic to these sites, and make them more obviously useful, perhaps more profitable, and certainly encourage them to do more with it.

Once you can find me any major network site that has even 5% of their content available on their website then this becomes a reasonable discussion. In addition to the lack of content, there is also some technical considerations, here is a short list: I don't want to download your custom player (use a standard codec), I don't want the video to randomly start over forcing me to re-watch commercials, if I have to leave your site I don't want to be stuck re-watching 5 minutes of commercials in order to seek (or fast forward if you prefer), I don't want your website/video player/whatever to freak out and stop playing because I'm unable to connect to the advertising server (I'm not talking about intentional blocks here, I'm talking about that Hulu thing where you watch 45 seconds of a screen telling you that they can't contact the ad network), I want the shows online available in HD (720p or greater please), I don't want to create an account to watch "mature content" (I've never had to log into my TV), needless to say I could go on.

As long as their is a source that doesn't have to deal with the real costs of operation, and doesn't have to support the artists or creators, and doesn't have to pay taxes or be a good citizen, then it will be hard to get people to convert - everyone likes a free lunch!

I understand what you're trying to say, but I couldn't disagree more. Even the best pirate sites are usually fairly crappy: they have tons of ads, the episodes vary in quality, they are not all well organized, etc. Getting people to convert to legal alternatives is actually fairly simple and very profitable, just look at Netflix. The problem facing Netflix is that content companies want to control distribution, they don't care what is most profitable (or at least they don't realize that they have made it their second priority).

If the MPAA or the RIAA were to spend even 1/10 of the money they have spent on lobbying, litigating, "re-educating", etc. building a quality, useful, legal service then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

If congress had any clue they would be looking to pass legislation which forces copyright holders to make content available at 1 rate for any distributor. You can pick any amount you want $7.00 per person, $1,000,000 for unlimited access, $0.02 for every minute watched - it doesn't matter, as long as everyone was given equal access you would see huge growth around the content industry.

Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

That will most certainly bring down the very content industry that so many here claim to support.

Like I wrote above: we've been hearing this songs for more than 10 years now and the sky still hasn't fallen. And as long as 1.5 M/ep is possible and there's yet another record year at box office, I simply can't take any of these horror visions seriously.

Re:

SOPA will only make the entertainment industry fail harder by throwing many of their loyal customers in jail because they didn't follow the RUUUUUUURS.

Well Big Media, have fun trying to make record profits (if any money) when the people who aren't in prison, shipped to some "re-education" camp, or fallen victim to some other undeserved fate wouldn't even watch or listen to your products if they were paid $20.

Re: Bad Luck, if you dont like the law...

Re: Re: Re:

It doesn't shut down the internet

Well, he didn't say that, he said it was a first step ... and it is a first step.

I would think that artists should be rejoicing, especially the independent ones.

Until someone at Warner listens to your music, decides that part of your melody is too similar to a Lil' Wayne song (which was a rip-off of Ray Charles) and then sends a notice to your website host that your are infringing. Then what? I mean, you could find yourself in legal trouble under the current system but it is unlikely that a judge would force you to take down your ENTIRE website. They may grant an injunction concerning a specific song but under SOPA you wouldn't have any web presence for your music and you wouldn't be making an advertising money or receiving any credit card payments. How is that reasonable?

The indies suffer with piracy as the majors do

I actually don't find that credible. Netflix should be a HUGE boon to indie film producers. It makes your film accessible to far more people and should easily account for a large portion of your revenue.

If the only social value on the internet for you was pirated content and websites packed with infringing material, then yes, you are going to be sad. You don't have my sympathy though, how can I feel for you when it's just your free lunch that is over?

If only those sites were going to be shut down then you might have a point.

I notice that you have slowly moved from answering Mikes question - how do you measure success? - to a the typical IP talking points. A lot of speculation, no citations, no studies, just an opinion that this legislation is somehow "good." So I'll repeat - how do you measure success?

Re: Re: How Will You Gauge SOPA's Success? - with difficulty

Further, IFPI stats, using documents posted from 2000-2010 shows a drop in recorded music sales including online at 58%.

Of course it would be easier to measure recorded music sales if the RIAA still reported their financials. But they stopped reporting publicly when news sources started including the numbers while talking about piracy court cases.

SOPA's Success?

I'm kind of surprised by this article...

"How will you gauge SOAP's success?" I think the whole point is that regardless of if it's passed with a full bill of health, it won't succeed.

Sure the law would get through and the world would have to lube up, but regardless of how many big-bad-infringers are caught, the copyright industries will still bleat, "PIRATE! PIRATE! LOOK AT OUR PROFITS! THEY'RE EVER SO LOW!" Then they'll push for another law that will make it illegal to turn on your car radio, without a supervisor from the copyright industry there to watch and time your use.

It's a quest for the powerful to get more powerful. That's all it's ever been.

I knew of places in the early 90's one could go with an FTP connection (provided you knew people on the net), get login and password from them, connect up, then you had to know about hidden folders, not visible and what their file names were to open them. Once you did that, pretty much every thing out there and recent was available.

Now personally, while I knew of it, I never did take advantage of it. Those types of sites have now moved on to better security. If you think for a moment this bill will stop that sort of technique, think again.

Those sites were not your typical site that had some sort of forum. They had no purpose in life other than to spread pirated goods. You didn't accidentally blunder into the site through a mistype. You didn't accidentally blunder in to the goods without first knowing where to find them. All the searching in the world wouldn't prevent it from coming back. Nor would seizing a domain as malware distributors even know about having multiple backup domains on hand. At best you take it down for 5 minutes by taking the domain.

Nor will blocking the money work. There are a ton of ways to pass money that doesn't involve a credit card. Somehow drug dealers are quite adept at legalizing and laundering money.

The backlash is something else though. It appears this is an effort to turn the net into a combination store front/tv. If you think the world will idly set by and see what they really liked dumped in the trash can because of entrenched media corporations without a mumur, wait till they nail one of this sites as collateral damage that was a total mistake.

I've long ago had enough of this crap of inflated figures justifying the next ridiculous ratcheting of the law. The ink can't get dry on one before the next one is in the pipes. The law of copyright today is a farce. The public domain part has all but been eliminated. The value of copyright has been hijacked into exactly what it was put in place to prevent.

I no longer buy movies, no longer buy music. I will not support such an industry. As this steady drum beat of increased protections are put in place more and more see it for what it is.

IF this SOPA passes I guess the only relevant measure of "success" will be how much more prosperous other global regions without governing bodies beholden to legacy industry fare.

Really, if SOPA merely does pass it’s a success for its supporters. Industry will have succeeded in in its attempt to remove the checks and balances from the judicial system. Once Industry can finally criminalize the patrons for consuming its product in an undesirable fashion, they will, as they have tried to do so in courts to date.

These industries will love it once alternate DNS routing systems become common and our cybercriminal grandparents are asking us for the addresses to them because cost of access to the formerly televised reruns they hope to watch artificially inflates to $300/month just like their blood pressure medication has.

To most, they feel it is morally wrong to pirate content, (the contents of an .mp3 file, the content broadcast over our public airwaves, the contents of my medicine bottles?) and they don’t do it often.

It is far more wrong to restrict access to and distribution of content in order to create otherwise non-existent barriers for the perceived benefit of the few currently wielding power over the many.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

Re:

"With SOPA, there is great potential that many of the pirate sites out there today which facilitate the access, host the files, or otherwise contribute to piracy won't be accessible from the US - at least not easily."

And, if it were to happen that an innocuous site were to get caught up in this great big firewall, what harm does that do to our culture? Right?

It's not that the law can be used to block the pirates, it's the other sites that get flagged erroneously. Where is the judicial oversight? Where is the way to get your case heard and get that flag removed?
And where are the people involved in the discussion about this bill? Why are consumer groups being banned from the debate?

Sure, the congress critters are supposed to represent the people, but we all know that that hasn't been true in a long while, given their track record. Massive amounts of people opposing the law, and congress just shrugs and continues as if nothing's going on.

I can answer your question

The first and the third are "upload-and-go", so infringement is possible. The middle could possibly be used to send infringing material. However, the very possibility that they may be used for infringement will enable litigants-empowered by SOPA-to shut down those sites, and destroy my way of making business.

So you're wrong. DEAD wrong. SOPA is bad for artists and filmmakers and only good for the legacy gatekeepers.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Easy -- But how /profitable/ is Youtube?

Re: Re: Re:

TBH, I looked for Cars 2 on Youtube. It would make sense to use that platform, charge a small fee (Say, $1...) then find out how much people pay for streaming technology.

This is based on many of the different studies that have come out, most of which show that anywhere from 20-40% of people "download"

Do you have any links to those studies? I've read quite a few that make the argument that the pricing is too high, the ones that infringe the most also download a lot, and more legal alternatives would allow for better service instead of enforcement.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

We can beat them at their own game!

We should just post infringing content to their boards, forums and wherever their content can be found. Point out to the offended party where the offense takes place, and watch as they ban-hammer each other off the internet.

Re: Re: Re:

My feeling is that the answer here lies in the cost of actually doing it legally, meeting regulations, accepting liability, and all of other pesky things that happen when you actually want to run it like a business.

So in an argument about SOPA, which will add tremendous hurdles of regulations and liability to any interactive internet service, your argument to approve SOPA is that the reason legal sites are having a hard time competing is because there's too much regulation and liability?

Really?

Here's a great example: If the people who currently pirate TV episodes instead viewed them from the original sources (network websites), they would increase the traffic to these sites, and make them more obviously useful, perhaps more profitable, and certainly encourage them to do more with it.

I would gladly download the TV shows I'm most interested in watching from the network's website. In the past, I've even given the price I'm willing to pay per episode ($1-2 assuming a weekly show). I'm not a fan of streaming for this type of content. I want to download the show on the night it was broadcast (as well as being able to say, download all of last season too). I don't want it crippled with DRM. And I want it in standard formats so I can use it with the video players of my choice. So, please point me to a network website that allows me to do that, and I'll have my credit card info ready.

Re: Bad Luck, if you dont like the law...

Re: Bad Luck, if you dont like the law...

That's not possible. Under SOPA, getting a new country would be outlawed since it might facilitate infringement. They're going to shut down all forms of transport since it might contribute to moving around discs or hard drives that might contain infringing material.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

To be fair, £6.99 isn't that bad for a new Disney film. I wonder if it's just a sale price, or maybe they just started realising that their normal pricing was excessive.

The reasons why iTunes has never gotten my money for movies are because they're usually extras-free, are usually more expensive than the DVD/Blu and have no resale value (and are therefore less valuable). But really, the DRM is the killer, especially on content I've supposedly "bought".

Last time I rented a movie from there (a freebie via Orange), it decided that one of my devices was the only one that it would play on. I couldn't work out which of the devices was "authorised" and so I couldn't watch it in the pre-set expiration period. No way in hell am I paying money for that experience, and that's assuming I'm even allowed to access content in the first place (it's only due to a fairly random set of circumstances that I can still use the UK iTunes store to access the content I want).

Again, legal purchasers lose out, but nobody who pirates the movie for free will have had problems of any kind...

Re: Re: Re:

I was able to find it for sale on Itunes, if that helps you out.

No. It doesn't help him out. Get it from iTunes walled garden and you have no choice but to watch it on iTunes, in Apples proprietary format, with DRM, so it is not easily transferable to all the devices he wishes to enjoy it on. You also have to pay more than the market would think reasonable for a possibly inferior encode.

On the contrary, the "scene" self regulates the quality of all encodes, can usually be found readily in a format of your choice, for whatever device you wish to enjoy it on, for an infinite number of times.

I have to tell you, most people despise iTunes as much as they despise the gatekeepers themselves. In addition to all this, the longer the "content industry" delays innovating to the point where people will happily part with money for content, the lower the actual perceived value of the content becomes. Leave it too long and the actual perceived value will, in fact, be zero.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Re: Re: Re:

Here's a great example: If the people who currently pirate TV episodes instead viewed them from the original sources (network websites), they would increase the traffic to these sites, and make them more obviously useful, perhaps more profitable, and certainly encourage them to do more with it.

To prove your point. I used to 'pirate' The Daily Show, because it isn't (/didn't used to be*) on Dutch tv. I loved that show, but the pirated version was the only version I could get.
Until at some point Comedy Central (Viacom) decided to stream the episodes of The Daily Show (including the extra exclusive content) on their website. (www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes)

Granted, I could not watch it on tv anymore, but with the extra content (the extra bits to the interviews etc) I'll gladly sit behind the laptop. I'll even watch the one ad they air in between segments.
(it's usually just one and the same ad, because I'm not in the US, and ComedyCentral's ad-partners don't have any inclination to serve the outside-the-US people)

So it can be done. It's just that many networks don't want to do it.
The only caveat in the case of Comedy Central is, that it has to have a presence on your local tv as well. In our case we do have Comedy Central, but they don't air TDS or the Colbert Report on their regular channel.

* Recently Comedy Central got a new channel called CC-Extra, on my tv. And on that they air last night's TDS and Colbert Report. So I don't really need to watch it on the website, but I still do some times.

Re: How Will You Gauge SOPA's Success?

This is probably, and unfortunately, very close to the truth. Despite being able to come up with "hard" numbers for how much piracy is costing them, the content industries seem to be unable to quantify or specify exactly what they're looking for, other than "pirates."

How it'll be measured?

I guess that it will be a periodic statistic somewhere in an official-looking document stating that so-and-so many sites were blocked, comparing it to the previous periods and trying to chart an evolution. The report will always contain an ever growing number of sites that are on some sort of 'watch-list' meaning that they have to 'step up' in their filtering of content.

And they will claim success because every time, more and more sites are blocked and taken offline. They'll even use the fact that most of them don't fight back as proof that they were taken offline justly.
If need be, they'll make up some numbers and declare piracy dead or dying.

But the proof will not be available to the public, since it will be copyrighted and any website that cites part of it is guaranteed to be the next victim of this law. Politicians will gloat because of the praise they receive from the content corporations. They will be ever more firm in their resolve that it was a just law.

Not that it will matter anyhow, because a lot people will abandon the internet. After all, why use an internet that only offers the exact same big media corporation content as the radio or the television? And with the same 'freedom'? Or the same amount of interactivity... Only the most limited of services will be left, making you constantly aware that everything you do online is monitored, censored and recorded. Online freedom will be virtually nonexistent.

Yes, the big corporations will be happy. For a while. Until they realize that the customers aren't returning to the cinema's and aren't buying the same content for the 5th time, only with a different licensing scheme or some other form of DRM.

Meanwhile, the human race will already have built something else behind their backs. Some new 'disruptive technology'. Just like the internet before it, it will be built out of a need to communicate, interact and share.

Re:

As the author of this post, I want to thank you for your reasoned response to my question.

I think your view of what SOPA will accomplish shows a restraint that I'm not sure is shared by the industries behind the bill. While I'm sure a steering of the "soft middle" towards legitimate services will help their collective bottom lines, I think that it won't be enough to satisfy them.

As others have pointed out, legitimate services (like Netflix, Spotify, etc.) already exist and that with the industry truly behind them, they could be better and offer more, thus monetizing more of the "soft middle."

Netflix and Spotify, among others, are piracy killers. They're also useful in introducing new artists to their users. Of course, the labels and studios are not happy trading plastic disc dollars for digital dimes and are continually ratcheting up their licensing fees, making it harder for these allies to operate profitably. It doesn't help that cable providers and performance royalty organizations are piling on as well.

If these new services are going to thrive and continue to chip away at piracy, the labels and studios need to be happier with lower rates, rather than slowly strangling these businesses out of existence. A smaller percentage of something is always better than 0% of piracy.

The flipside to these streaming services is that, for some users, the stream is the end product. Netflix and Spotify will be all they need, which won't help the content industries in their quest for sales increases.

As much as the labels and studios claim to be embracing the digital age, their actions seem to indicate that they would like everyone to continue purchasing their physical products, which provide them with higher profits as well as more control in the market. The industries have yet to kick out any form of "piracy killer" on their own and seem to still be of the belief that they can control the marketplace through DRM, release windows and catalog control.

Another good point brought up by the commenters is the fact that things will probably get worse for them, SOPA or no SOPA, simply because they're running head on into a generation of potential customers that only know that if something isn't available for free, it had better be available for dirt cheap and easy to obtain. A generation raised on the internet isn't going to settle for whatever limited services the content industry cobbles together with their (the industries') best interests in mind.

I think you're correct in the fact that reducing piracy will positively impact both the majors and the indies. However, this legislation isn't the way to handle it. We don't have tons of data available on HADOPI and various three-to-whatever strikes programs yet, but if the "soft middle" is truly shifting away from piracy, the results have yet to indicate that they're shifting back towards physical goods and their accompanying margins. If anything, they're headed for streaming services or other digital options.

The bottom line (in my mind) is that simply pressuring the easily swayed won't be enough for the industries behind this legislation, which will lead to increasingly vague definitions of "rogue site" or "piracy."

Re: Plagerism

I wrote this. And I wrote it two days ago. So, if anyone's plagiarizing anyone, it's probably nobody. Sometimes multiple intelligent people draw the same conclusions and make the same points independently.

You know, kind of like how multiple SOPA supporters can independently come to the mistaken conclusion that their new favorite bill is going to save the big boys of content from the lawlessness of the Wild West Internet™.

Re: Re:

Ro, I think it is unrealistic to think that 20% of the population would suddenly stop consuming all media.

There is no question of money here - using legal free services (everything from radio to "download with ads" style services, or internet radio stations...) is a form of consumption and a form of payment. It isn't always a question of getting direct money out of anyone's pocket, and rather about getting them onto the right side of the situation so that they get the content they want and provide a value stream back to the artists and rights holders.

Buy or not buy, legal consumption is the long term goal. It's makes the rest possible.

Re: Re:

I don't remember where I saw it, but recently I read a story that the record labels were basically on their last steps to stopping shiny disc production altogether, perhaps moving to a smaller format (like USB key) or just straight digital download. They are not there yet, but they are clearly preparing for the day that it happens. I suspect many of them are looking at the net income of cutting out many of the middlemen (like retailers, distribution, etc) and being able to focus on product for sale.

Potentially, the shiny disc version will be rare enough to merit a higher price, sort of like Vinyl is today.

"The flipside to these streaming services is that, for some users, the stream is the end product. Netflix and Spotify will be all they need, which won't help the content industries in their quest for sales increases. "

I think that recent deals with Netflix shows that the movie people are more than willing to embrace the new technology if there is enough money in it. Moving people from pirating to using netflix, as an example, will by a net gain for the studios, directly or indirectly. I think much of this is about breaking the cycle of piracy, more than anything else.

"We don't have tons of data available on HADOPI and various three-to-whatever strikes programs yet, but if the "soft middle" is truly shifting away from piracy, the results have yet to indicate that they're shifting back towards physical goods and their accompanying margins. If anything, they're headed for streaming services or other digital options. "

Well, the only numbers I saw that might have indicated this is when IPRED came into play. In that case, in that region, in that country, recorded music sales shot up for a period of time, until people either found alternatives or found way to route around the problem. Since we have never been in a "less than open" situation in the US, we don't know the true long term effects.

"The bottom line (in my mind) is that simply pressuring the easily swayed won't be enough for the industries behind this legislation, which will lead to increasingly vague definitions of "rogue site" or "piracy." "

I am suspecting that there will be a fair bit of confusion, but I am also expecting that the most obvious offenders (TPB, Megaupload, and the like) will find themselves unavailable in the US market. I also suspect that there will be some people trying to create "work arounds", but that one or two of them will get nailed and the rest will cower and hide, and over a period of time, things will stabilize at a different point than we have today, and likely at a different point than anyone here considers. There is a ton of space between the two points, so who knows?

Re:

It's called bandcamp.com...lol. Everyone selling their stuff gets 85-90% of the profit. The site only takes a small portion to upkeep their service.

But the labels will die soon...unless if they actually listen to their consumers (AND us musicians) and decide that it should either be an even 50-50 split or the artist gets the lion's share. Because the shit compensation for the artist is the reason a lot of people I know just pirate label music.

Re: When pirating is out of direct sight.

Re: Re:

This is the fundamental issue at hand, the entertainment industry is asking to be protected from free enterprise. Artists are making and selling their own music because they realize that a platinum selling, label driven album makes them very little money vs. a privately marketed (via social media, YouTube, etc.). SOPA at it's core is protection for an antiquated business model and an inefficient product delivery model by outlawing innovation.

The traditional MBA program axiom of business that says "Adapt or die" is being circumvented. Long live 8-track and Super 8!!!

Re: Re:

Brilliant, simple and undeniable example of how the entertainment industry is painfully out of touch. The devices and scenario you present is exactly why there is such a strong market for alternatives. This is a more over the top version of the argument over audio cassettes, VCR's that could record TV, CD's and DVD's. The industry only likes new tech that they believe they can use to create another sales opportunity.

Remember Disney was the last studio to get into the DVD business? They offered every kids classic on VHS long after the majority of the industry moved to DVD. They pushed the idea that this was the "last time" the Disney Video Vault would be open and put a deadline as to when these video tapes would no longer be available, and people bought the tapes. 9 months later, Disney DVD was born offering the same content "digitally remastered". The same thing is happening today with Blue Ray. Meanwhile, the are saying they are losing money to piracy.

I agree that people would rather have appropriately priced, tech savvy solutions to get legal content. The industry has no interest in delivering it. Instead, they want to innovate the business into being something you buy but do not own, something that's yours, but not yours to sell to another after you are done with it. NO THANK YOU!!!

We The PEOPLE need to be heard!!! Let your politicians know that if they vote for this, you wont vote for them! This needs to go into social media and We the PEOPLE need to be consistent. A vote for this is a resignation letter!!!

Re: Re: Re:

Mike has often argued that the give-away-and-pray method is not a long term solution to making money. And that's also not what most of us are proposing. It's just a possible first step of getting out there. Because it drives traffic to your website.

There are many ways of making money. For instance adding something that can't be downloaded to the package can really drive sales. Or perhaps work on commission. Just make it easy for people to pay and don't hassle your (future) fans with region locks and other kinds of digital restrictions. Or as the internet saying goes: "Shut up and take my money."

The artists, when signed to a label, are getting paid almost nothing. If you're lucky you aren't taken in debt. They promise the moon when you sign up, and all you get is a tiny slice of cheese, if you're lucky. Most bands are not making any money from their music. A lot of them are in debt.

Re:

" used to earn 3x what I do now, before incentive rewarding cyberlockers stole most of the business (who themselves are a giant scam)"

Citation needed. No, your blind assumptions are not evidence. There may be hundreds of factors involved, finding an easy scapegoat does not make it true - unless you have other evidence to show that it is.

"The people I paid to work for me, the taxes I used to pay.....gone - all going to another country."

So, your business failed. Bad luck, that's been happening to businesses for centuries before the internet however.

Also, your assumptions might well be wrong about where the money's going in other ways. If I buy a videogame instead of a Blu-Ray because I find the game to be better value for money, no money is being "stolen" from the movie industry. They might think so when their profit goes down, but they'd be wrong and do well to better service their customer base.

Re: Tim, It's Simple

Re: Re:

Yeah, I'm imagining some kind of informal network where you mail a usb stick full of stuff to someone, and someone else mails you another full of other stuff. $20 for 16GB of content? That much music would cost something like $4000 at RIAA prices. There would be logistical issues to figure out, but I would think if the industry keeps getting the laws they want, something similar is bound to pop up.

Re:

"Further, I think that all of this is very good for independent artists, who will no longer have to compete with the high end product being "free!", and they may be able to better attract audiences on the basis of their own content, not on someone else's."

You'd be surprised just how many independent artists rely on piracy. Piracy gets their name out there, without it some artists wouldn't be where they are today. Piracy has brought to my attention many many independent bandss and artists which I would have never known of were it not for piracy. In which I now buy their albums if/when possible.

Re: Re: Re:

I think that recent deals with Netflix shows that the movie people are more than willing to embrace the new technology if there is enough money in it. Moving people from pirating to using netflix, as an example, will by a net gain for the studios, directly or indirectly.

Yes, but they still seem to view Netflix as a competitor to be tolerated at best if it can't be extinguished, rather than a path to greater revenue.

Re: SOPA

Heavy irony aside those who believe in the "land of the free" should start reading into what Corporativism means and what it's related to (i.e Facism). A country so focused on finding ways to protect the government and the corporations from the people will soon be shaking hands with North Korea and calling communism their new best friend.

I'm no poli-sci expert, but isn't corporatism just about the polar opposite of communism (other than the tendency toward oligarchy)?

I think Tim Cushing's article is very thoughtful and tries to get away from arguments that rely solely on superficial labeling.

However, the request for a metric of success presents the following problem: no matter what empirical data will come out, (1) the metric will be contested (i.e., whether it's a true measure of "success"), and (2) conclusions based on the data will also be contested (whether the data supports a conclusion of "success").

Why would that happen? Let's say the data shows that following adoption of SOPA into law results in (1) higher pay for content creators, (2) less profits for search engines, and (3) less websites for Regular Joe to access THE SAME content.

Content creators would consider SOPA a success, search engines would consider SOPA a failure, and Regular Joe wouldn't care because he can access the original content anyway (or maybe he would care because he erroneously thinks his free speech is somehow abridged, etc.).

Would SOPA be a success for society in general? I'm not really sure that question even makes sense because there are many conflicting interests within the U.S. society.

So how can a metric be judged as a success or failure? Well, if the purpose of SOPA is to make content creators more income, then I guess we can get data from the Census Bureau after passing the bill. If content creators wind up making more money, then SOPA is successful.

The problem here is that the content creators' raise in income may decrease the income of search engines. So, search engines will consider SOPA a failure (not in relationship to SOPA's stated purpose, but in relation to their own business interest).

The problem with stating SOPA's purpose as "making more money for content creators" is that it won't gain political traction.

So, a metric can state success or failure only in relationship to a clear and measurable goal. However, politicians will not state such a clear and measurable goal because their bill will never be adopted.

That means that it is perhaps a bit unrealistic to ask for a measure of success or failure.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

I disagree with your second analysis. Of course, this is in no way a personal attack.

Under Warner and Lil' Wayne facts, the following can happen under SOPA:
(1) lose your ability to derive money from ads you accepted on the infringing PORTION of your website (of course your whole website will be devoid of advertising if all your pages are infringing),
(2) if you paid to appear as a sponsored ad, then the the infringing portion of your website won't appear in a search (so the internet advertising service like Google AdWords can't show a link to your infringing portion when others search for your site)
(3) you won't be able to receive payment through your site if you are selling something.

Moreover, Warner can do that ONLY IF your site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property. That means that if you happen to have an infringing song, but the rest of your site is dedicated to things other than ripping off songs, then Warner can't do anything to you.

Warner would have to send a notification to (say) Google and tell them Warner thinks you are infringing. Then Google sends you a message saying Warner thinks you are infringing.

Google can't interfere with your website if you answer that message through email saying in good faith that your site is not dedicated to theft of U.S. property. If you answer (send "counter notification"), then Warner will have to go to court and spend a bunch of money trying to get an injunction. You can sit back and not spend a dime unless you want to fight the injunction.

If you decide not to answer Google, only then is Google obligated and allowed to interfere with your site.

So (1) you will probably be able to keep your website and display all other songs even if you have one allegedly infringing song, (2) Warner has to make an investment to come after you, which means they may decide your infringing activity isn't worth paying their lawyers to take you to court (and they won't come after you if you're broke), and (3) your loss could only turn out to be taking down the song.